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In this column, Alexius talks about the traditions and history of Laos New Year.
The tradition of Pi Mai
The tradition of Pi Mai
By Alexius Nyna Burnett
By Alexius Nyna Burnett
Right after Christmas, the average American begins to prepare for the New Year. This can be celebrated with family and friends gathering together to have drinks, make toasts, and turn on the TV to watch the NYC ball drop countdown. However, Laotian people celebrate quite differently. They enjoy Laos New Year: “Pi Mai”. It lands on either Apr. 13 or 14, which is the traditional solar New Year in parts of India and Asia on the hottest days, followed by the three most important days to ask for forgiveness: trips to the temple, offerings to Buddhist monks, and receiving blessings and wishes.
Pi Mai is the time of the year right before the rainy season begins, and is meant to recognize how important water is in life. This is a time when everyone has water fights with anyone in sight, but respectfully pouring water on elders. Loud music always plays at night, and the streets are crowded and full of people. Laos' New Year has been celebrated for thousands of years, originating from an old tradition. Lao Advancement Organization of America, which provides education and offers different programs to help senior individuals, states that it all started from the legend of Tham-Ma-Barn.
Tham-Ma-Barn's story all started when his parents (a very rich man and a kind, beautiful woman) got married, but the wife was not able to have a child. After four years of trying for children during the marriage, the husband had decided to hold a sacred ceremony to the ginormous tree Toll Hi on a gorgeous day to beg for a child. The tavarbood, a male angel that lives on the bottom of heaven, had heard the man's request and made an ex Yuka to be reincarnated as the couple's son. Growing up, Tham received all the special training and education to be a wise and knowledgeable child and become a teacher to perform ceremonies for people.
One day, the highest-level deity, named Ca-Bin-Ra-Pom, heard about the infamous Tham and his cleverness. Ca-Bin-Ra-Pom wanted to test how smart Tham actually was. The deity challenged Tham to a contest in which he had to answer three questions correctly but, if he could not, then his head would be cut off as a sacrifice of teaching Buddha. Alternatively, if Tham got all of the answers right, then the deity would instead cut off his own head to show respect. Tham had seven days to answer the following questions: “Where is the virtue of a person in the morning? Where is the virtue of a person at noon? Where is the virtue of a person in the evening?” Six days passed by, with Tham still completely lost on how to answer, until he walked upon and rested at the Toll Hi tree. As he was resting, he heard a married eagle couple chatting about the contest he was in. The husband eagle explained how he knew the answers and told them to his wife. Tham went home joyful, as he then knew that he would not have to cut off his head.
When it was finally time to give Ca-Bin-Ra-Pomthe answers, the deity was shocked that Tham was correct. As promised, he would cut off his head. However, before he could do that, he gave specific instructions to his seven daughters because his head was so holy that, when it would get cut off, the world would burn down. If his head was in the air, the land would be arid, but if it was in water, then it would dry up. To prevent all of that from happening, the daughters were to parade his head around the earth’s axis 60 times and bring it to the Kay-Rad mountain to bathe it with holy perfumed water every year to show respect, loyalty, and thankfulness to their father for giving rain and prosperity to the earth. This ritual began to happen every year: whichever daughter in each family was born on the day of the week that the holiday landed on had to perform the ceremony. This is how Laos New Year traditions all began.
There are three most important celebration days of Pi Mai. The first day is called the last day of the old year, in which Laotians make sure their houses are deep cleaned. After that is out of the way, they can prepare food and offerings for the Buddhist monks. People take Buddha images down from their original places and put them on special, temporary and easy-to-access places so that everyone can see the images on which they will pour the perfumed water. The Buddha images get decorated with flowers. Senior monks take the younger ones to a garden so they can pick flowers and wash them. Whoever did not pick flowers instead brings the baskets to wash them and make them shine bright. This is so they can be cleaned and purified before Pi Mai.
Meanwhile, at all of the temples, monks take the Buddha statues from the buildings and Ceem Salahongtham and instead place them in tiny, colorful houses to undergo the Song Pha ceremony. Song Pha is where monks and Laotians pour perfumed mixed water on top of the statues to receive blessings and wishes. They use perfumed water because it is also holy water that protects their house and family members from bad luck. The temples also bring sand stupas or mounds that are decorated with flags, flowers, white lines, and a splash of holy perfumed water. This is to symbolize the mountain where King Kabinlaphon chopped off his head and was kept by his daughters. Also, this was a way of being a merit for the monks.
There is also the Hae Vor event that happens. As stated on TripSavvy, a top-ten travel informational website, Hae Vor is when “Leaders of the town’s most notable Buddhist temples are carried in gilded, pagoda-shaped palanquins, flanked by monks and other devotees, as watchers sprinkle water on the parade passing by.” This is also joined by a beauty pageant called Nang Sangkhan. It is held with seven contestants to represent the daughters of Ca-Bin-Pom from the legend. The winner of the contest becomes the key figure of the parade around her town or city, and she will ride on the back of a colorful decorated elephant, also joined by the other six contestants.
The second day of this celebration is known to be the day of no day, a time of resting. The reason is that it is when elders advise the young ones to avoid naps, which are bad luck and could make them become sick in the near future. When younger people pay more respect to their elders, they in turn receive wishes for peace, health, and prosperity. This day is when all family and friends gather together for a Baci ceremony where they welcome souls and the new year, like repping different parts of the human body, which are asked to come back. At Baci ceremonies, the tradition is to tie a white thread around each other's wrists to wish love, peace, prosperity, longevity, good health, and happiness in life. Then, the offerings and food that were prepared the day before get offered to the Buddhist monks to pay homage to loved ones, including ancestors, relatives, and friends. This beautiful day also has a community celebration with classical folk dances, especially the dance Lamvong.
Finally, it is the last day of the celebration: Sangkhan Kheun Pi Mai, the time when all of the huge celebrations and parades happen. The third day is the day of freeing animals from their cages or tanks. This is because Laotians believe that freeing them takes sickness and poor lung problems away from their bodies, which is another way of being a merit to monks. The parade has impressive dances, performed by all of the schools and townspeople. The dances also include the religious highlight of the mythical creatures with big, red faces and big black eyebrows, gold earrings, and long brown wheat hair, like straw, covering the person's whole body underneath the costume of Pou Ghen and Gna Ghen. Those creatures carry the revered Prabhag Buddha statue in a golden house carried by two poles. At the end of the parade, the statue gets put at the Wat Mai temple to rest and have perfumed water poured on him.
Wat Mai temple contains the Prabang, a gilded statue of the Buddha, being bathed under the legendary serpent-shaped pipes, under a temporary pavilion. As with the first two days of the celebration, citizens wish their elders to have a good and healthy, long life and they ask for forgiveness for bad acts they have done in the past, like hurting the elders' feelings. They also give provisions such as water, food, incense, scarves, perfume, and lamps. Since this is the last day of the celebration, all of the Buddha images from day one get moved back to their original place. After that, people go to temples and listen to the monks' chanting and prayers to ask for forgiveness from the monks and Buddha images that they accidentally touched over the previous couple of days.
Monks and Buddha images cannot be touched, specifically by females and kids. These images can only be touched by adult, male elders, who are baptized with dedication to their god, containing very strict rules of their rebirth. The tradition of Vien Tein is used to end the day and celebrate. Vien Tien is a candlelight process that happens all over the temples to finish off the blessings.
The celebration of Laos New Year, Pi Mai, is a wonderful and endlessly fun celebration with festivals, parades, and traditions. It is shocking how differently people all over the world celebrate the New Year and why they celebrate. Pi Mai is the time of forgiveness and blessings. It is to be enjoyed with dances and folktales to pass down for generations. This holiday helps people to start a new rebirth and purify themselves and others. As Laotians would say on Laos New Year, "Sôk di pi mai!"
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